I think I just realized that Sound Cloud is kind of crappy. Any thoughts?

I think they alter the sounds when you load them, probably squeezing out some highs and lows, and I think they shortened the songs. Is it my imagination or do they increase the tempo just a little.

Anyway, I know I'm nuts sometimes but would like to hear if other people have had similar thoughts.

Some members here experienced funny behaviour during uploads, but I'm pretty sure that their mp3's were not configured correctly - this can effect the tempo significantly. The only thing about the highs and lows being effected, is that they could be converting them to a lower bit rate - I heard or read somewhere that this can be the case, but no expert, just know that mp3 at 256 and 320 bit rate are near as dam it similar quality as wav samples.

If you are able to download the track you should be able to tell the bit rate in the meta tag ID.

Yes me too
Uploading a song with a heavy vocal effect, I'd recorded it at a very good quality, uploaded it to Soundcloud and it sounded muffled and converted.
I knew what I was listening for but just wasn't there to share !

Compared the duration of my original files with the duration on soundcloud :
No change.
If Soundcloud would speed-up the song tempo, a song must be shorter. But it isnīt.

I didnīt compare sound quality on soundcloud with other platform-players, but I had never the feeling that soundcloud delivers bad sound quality. But, as I said, I never made a "soundcheck". What I noticed is that jamendo provides a poor streaming quality. Sadly. This bad sound is audible/noticeable.

I guess the sound quality depends on the file format on soundcloud. People upload / offer 128, 192, 320 mp3, wav files .
That makes it hard to evaluate real production quality.

But hey, most peops are sitting in front of some small plastic PC boxes or theyīre wearing these small ear plugs instead quality headphones.
So what??????????
Most young consumers donīt set value on hifi-quality.   

I had the same realization the day after I posted this question, re: that the length of a song should be different. I must be wrong about my perceptions about tempo. Point well made.

However, I think sound quality might matter to musicians hoping for a place to share.  I my self use the cheap plastic speakers (my son got the good set) and I can still notice a difference. This is what got me to thinking. It comes back to someone's earlier statement in one of the other threads on how Bandamp gets more traffic. One can wonder if it's how long bandamp has been around or if there might be something more to it.

Anyway. Sound cloud is free. Sound cloud is a good holding place with good connection options to social media, but if they are changing the quality of songs they will never create a niche in the market that I think they are going for.